To those Listers that sometimes panic when something suddenly stops working
on their car, the following is a reminder to remain calm and let cooler
heads prevail. Recently, a dozen or so cars from our Ottawa club had a nice
run to a car show south of town in Brockville, along the St Lawrence River.
It was mainly a musclecar show, with lots of big Detroit iron, and even had
a Duesenberg there - excellent! On the return drive to Ottawa, I discovered
my overdrive in the TR6 was no longer working! It had been fine all the way
down. What I had first suspected was that, as we had to drive over a bit of
grass at the show, perhaps one of the solenoid leads (J-type OD, solenoid at
the bottom) had come off. Once home, I raised the car up to check, but both
leads were still in place. I then thought the unit might've been low on
fluid (it does leak more than even a typical lbc should), but I could only
add about 1.5 oz before it spilled over - no big deal. I had commented to my
wife that the toggle switch I use (on this retrofitted OD) felt a little
'mushy'. I picked up a replacement at the Canadian Tire store, put it in
last night, and Presto! - OD is back! Sometimes the simplest things are the
ones to check. For a time I was wondering if one of the wires on the top
cover had come undone, meaning complete interior removal just to check.
Normally you wouldn't expect a toggle switch to die, but it did in this
case! Whew! No need to haul the interior apart!
btw, the 'Motomaster' brand toggle switch I bought at Canadian Tire - is
made in England! Could it be that it is actually produced for Motomaster by
- dare I say it - Joseph Lucas?! Hmm - maybe I should've bought a spare
toggle switch at the same time! :-) Cheers, JD
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